Cloud based services are proliferating. Various enterprise and consumer applications that were based on software and/or hardware hosted by the end user are increasingly being offered as a service delivered through the cloud. For example, instead of running local email servers in the office and have employees use email client software to access emails and calendars, enterprises are adopting cloud based services such as Microsoft Office365 or Google Apps. Employees can use a web browser or a mobile device to simply access the service directly from the cloud. Similar trends are happening as enterprises are adopting applications such as Salesforce.com for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Box for storage, Workday for Human Resources Management (HRM), and the like. Advantageously, cloud based services are cost effective (removing local hardware and operational costs), platform agnostic (accessible from a host of user devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc.), offer better availability (less downtime and secure backups), and the like.
Similar trends are happening in enterprise networking and security. The Information Technology (IT) landscape has shifted dramatically. Cloud computing, mobility, and the Internet of Things are massive, unstoppable trends and have created new challenges for IT departments, ranging from security against new threat vectors to ensuring compliance with corporate policies and protecting against data loss. Organizations are finding that individual point solutions like firewalls, Unified threat management (UTMs), Identity Providers (IDPs), and virus scanning have difficulty addressing constantly changing threats and are challenging to tie together in a cohesive fashion to effectively identify and block the full breadth of threats. Further, organizations are seeing that such centralized, hardware-based security gateways simply no longer make sense in today's perimeter-less Internet, cloud, and the mobile-first world. Organizations are looking to cloud based solutions to reduce security administrative overhead and streamline capital investments in security infrastructure. They see the significant value of purchasing security as a service as opposed to purchasing numerous point products that address individual issues and are limited to the corporate perimeter. One exemplary type of security enforcement platform is a cloud-based distributed security system, such as available from Zscaler, Inc., the assignee of the present application. Such distributed security systems are multi-tenant and can manage thousands or even millions of user devices, seamlessly regardless of location, platform, device type, etc.
The adoption of cloud based services for applications and security create new challenges when it comes to benchmarking performance or troubleshooting issues. Cloud based services require good network connections between the end user client and the service. The service could be hosted on the Internet or on a private cloud infrastructure. There may be network latency issues when accessing the service resulting in a poor user experience. The service itself could have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) around performance and availability. Being able to benchmark key performance and availability metrics and have tools that can isolate faults and bottlenecks that could be degrading user experience is critical for the successful adoption of cloud services.